Safari - The World's Most Exciting Adventures?

Another popular sub genre of men's magazines was that dealing with adventures in the wild and, most specifically, the hunting of ferocious wild animals in inhospitable environments.  It's important to put these magazines into context - back in the fifties and sixties the conservation movement was in its infancy, going on safari to hunt big game in places like Africa was considered a legitimate 'sport'.  (Albeit one generally enjoyed only by the wealthy).   Big game hunters were seen still as heroic figures, taking on ferocious beats like Lions and Tigers single handed, (because they had their gun in the other hand).  It was all somehow justified on the grounds that it constituted a necessary cull of predators to protect the eco-system from imbalance.  Either that, or the big cats were rogue maneaters and therefore deserved to be shot.  Distasteful though the subject matter might seem to contemporary eyes, it did make for some vivid cover art, as seen in this August 1955 edition of Safari (Combined with Animal Life).

Being a pedant, I have to question whether that is an African elephant there being attacked by tigers which, of course, are indigenous to India?  The story straplines on the cover emphasise the variety of environments the safaris in question cover: Alaska, Africa and underwater.  This was an era before long-distance travel to far away, seemingly exotic locales was commonplace (unless you were rich), so this, along with many similar adventure magazines, catered to readers' travel fantasies, presenting them with exotic and apparently exictement filled vistas that seemed beyond their reach in reality.  Contemporary cinemas were likewise still filled with jungle-based tales of adventure, featuring big game hunters pitting themselves against hostile landscapes and wildlife.  Even as popular sentiment toward big game hunting began to change, such movies persisted with the heroes now presented as being engaged in heroically capturing exotic animals for zoos, so as to conserve them, rather than shooting them, (John Ford's Hatari! comes to mind here).  Seen today, magazines like Safari offer a fascinating window into a past era, where attitudes toward conservation, the environment and animal welfare were very different.  But that's the past for you - a different country.